


Coming Together

by pirategirljack



Category: Scorpion (TV 2014)
Genre: Comfort, F/M, Fluff, Waige - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-21
Updated: 2015-08-21
Packaged: 2018-04-16 10:05:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,374
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4621230
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pirategirljack/pseuds/pirategirljack
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Walter and Paige survive a case and have some moments.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> You guys, this show needs to come back on. Also, this came out longer than I thought it would be!

They were almost free. Walter pushed through the underbrush and made a path that Paige could follow. He knew she was strong and capable, but she was also more tired than him and had suffered more during their confinement. But he’d found a way out, and the team should be nearby by now, and if he could get her there before she collapsed of exhaustion, he’d call that a win.

“Walter--” something caught at the back of his shirt. Her hand, fumbling.

He turned just as she stumbled, and he caught her before she fell, but something was not right, he felt it in the very cores of his bones something that he would have called impossible and illogical if not for the fact of what it felt like. “Paige.” 

His hand was on her face before he could think whether or not he should do that, and he tried to catch her eyes.

“The poison,” she said, one arm clamped around her stomach, the other knotting into his shirt, her knuckles white. “He said he’d poisoned me, that it had a time limit--I felt fine, I didn’t believe him--Walter--”

This time when he said her name, it sounded frantic and distant in his own ears, like someone else was talking, but he didn’t have time to worry about it because Paige was failing. He knees went out, and she collapsed into his arms, her head lolling and her eyes rolling up into her head as all the color went out of her face. Walter let her weight take them both to the ground and barely controlled it enough not to hurt either of them.

She hadn’t said anything about poison.

He’d taken first aid classes when they first started taking these dangerous cases, and he was as good at emergency response as a layman could be, but his hands were shaking as he checked her pulse, as he lowered his ear over her face to hear if she was breathing, and his heart was beating too fast to accurately count her pulse. All that mattered was that she still had one. 

How long had she been feeling it’s effects? Why hadn’t she said anything?

Why hadn’t he thought to look back and make sure she was alright?

They’d been captured three days ago on a case, and most of that time, they’d been separated, questioned. The syndicate in question had kept him awake for two of those days, and he was half-mad with it before he’d had to figure out a way out. Paige had been thrown back into his room last night, and she’d been crying and exhausted, but there hadn’t been so much as a cuffmark or slash of rope burn, and she’d said they never laid a hand on her.

No, but they poisoned her to use her against him. Against herself. And he’d broken them out and signaled the team without finding out if there were other things to consider, extenuating circumstances that made the plan untenable.

No, he couldn’t panic. He could go totally insane, or sleep, or punch a wall until his hands were bloody when they got home, when everyone was safe. Now, he needed to think.

She had a pulse, and it was slow because she was unconscious, but it was there and it was steady for now.

Her breathing was shallow, but it didn’t sound obstructed when he laid his ear on her chest and listened to several too-fast-for-an-unconscious-person breaths.

Her skin was pale and cold, and there was sweat forming on her brow and the hollow of her throat. 

He wished he had a way to reach Toby. Toby would know what to do. But wishing got him nowhere, while staying here left them open to being caught by whoever might have followed them out. Walter took two deep breaths to get himself under control, and lifted her in his arms and went back to pushing through the underbrush. She felt heavier than she should have; he was more worn down than he’d thought, and this stab of adrenaline gave him the strength to carry on, but he could already feel his muscles shaking with fatigue, and when it wore off, he’d hardly be able to hold himself up, let alone her.

He only had to keep putting one foot in front of the other.

The walk was harrowing. Every step, he could have fallen, could have dropped her, could have tripped and fallen on top of her, could have passed out, the dots around the edges of his vision taking over more and more of his view. But then he reached a clearing, and the sun dazzled his eyes, and people ran toward him, yelling.

“She’s been poisoned,” he said, and it was Toby who was taking her weight out of his arms, Happy catching him before he could fall, Cabe pulling his other arm over his shoulder and more dragging than leading him back to the helicopter parked but not powered down across the clearing.

He didn’t make it to the seat before he was out.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Walter in the hospital.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is literally no conflict in this. It's just feels.

Walter woke in an emergency ward somewhere, the lights dim in his corner and people moving around somewhere beyond the curtain closed around his bed. He was alone, so he pushed himself up out of bed, and dragged the curtain aside. It was like he was made of cement, like the curtain was, like the air was, but he could see Paige in a bed nearby, doctors and nurses moving around her.

He couldn’t have been out long.

He wasn’t awake long.

\---

The second time Walter woke, he was in a room, and the sky outside the window was dark. Every inch of him ached. And someone was in the room with him. 

Paige.

It was harder, somehow, to get himself out of bed now, but he did it because it was the only way he could get to her. It was the same desperation he’d felt when he was on the cliff and he didn’t know where she was, but this time she was the one in danger, and he would have traded places with her in a second.

He reached her bedside and took a moment to hold on too tightly to the bar across the side, waited for the room to stop spinning, and squeezed his eyes closed against the wave of too-strong emotion that crashed into him. He was better at naming them now, at not being drowned by actually feeling things. She’d taught him that. But this was too much. He was too tired, too worn down, and she was so pale. So pale.

When he could open his eyes again, he reached over the railing and took her hand. He had never taken someone’s hand in a situation like this before--it was much more his way to dig his hands into his pockets and hang back and leave as soon as he could--but she would never have left his side if this was him. He’d seen her offer comfort like this before. 

And he wanted to know she was still alive. The beeps and readouts and machines all said she was, but he, unaccountably, wanted to feel it.

She felt warmer than she had before, and her hand was dry and smooth. He thought, for a moment, that her fingertips moved just a little under his, but that could have been anything.

Someone opened a door, and he turned to see Happy coming toward them from the bathroom, her face uncertain, her eyes exhausted. 

“I didn’t mean to interrupt. They put you both together because you kept waking up and trying to find her, and Toby wanted someone to stay with you...”

“No. No, it’s fine. She’s unconscious. She’s--” He wasn’t sure what he had meant to say when he started that sentence, so he let it dry up.

“She’s fine, Walter,” Happy said. She lifted a hand like she was going to lay it on his arm, hesitated, then carefully but pointedly laid it there anyway. “They found out what it was and gave her the cure. She’s weak and dehydrated and exhausted, but she’s fine. She’s sedated so she’ll rest.” She looked at him sharply, her eyes narrowed. “You’re supposed to be sedated, too.”

But all Walter heard was, “she’s fine”. Two such ordinary words should not have sounded so wonderful. He wanted to cry. He was crying, and it startled him as much as anything, because he couldn’t remember the last time he’d cried for real, with tears running down his face and his breathing hitching and stuttering.

Happy wrapped her arms around him and pulled his head down to her narrow shoulder, and then led him back to his bed. She hadn’t been this nurturing since the last time he got lost down the rabbit hole; she must’ve been worried. He caught at her wrist as she pulled the blanket up over him, and squeezed, trying to say things he didn’t have words for.

“I know,” Happy said. “Me too.”

She patted his shoulder and retreated to the chair in the corner, closer to Paige’s bed, and looked out the window to give them some privacy without having to give up her vigil.

Walter fixed his eyes on Paige’s profile. She was fine. Tomorrow, she’d wake up and they could go home.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Home again home again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All feels all the time on the 24 hour feels channel.

It took all morning for them to get released, but once they’d both slept it off, there wasn’t really any need to keep them anymore. He’d missed a day somewhere along the line, and Toby kept telling him increasingly unbelievable stories of the things he did when he was trying to find Paige. Paige laughed at him, and Walter ignored him and watched her, the pink back in her cheeks, the light back in her eyes.

They went back to her place, and everyone stayed around for a few hours, half ironing out the paperwork of the case, and half making sure they were okay. When Toby and Happy left, they took Ralph with them to give her a night off. Sly and Cabe stayed a while longer, telling stories of young-Walter that he didn’t have the strength to be embarrassed by. And then he was the only one left.

They fell into a companionable silence, and before it could get strange, Walter said, “You look exhausted. I should go.” But when he stood up, every muscle protested and his balance went sideways, and when he reached out for the arm of the couch, he missed and caught her shoulder. And she caught his hand before he could pull it away.

He met her eyes and she said, “Stay.”

“I don’t know if--”

“Remember that last night?” She said, “When you stayed awake even though you’d already been awake for two days so that I could rest?”

He did remember. Every second of it was seared into his brain with surreal clarity. She’d curled up on the old mattress in the dark room they were kept in, her back to him, and he’d thought something was wrong, that he’d failed her somehow. He couldn’t remember what he’d said during the last interrogation. Maybe he’d said something wrong and they’d told her--or hurt her.

But instead, she’d moved with tiny cramped movements until her back was up against his where he’d taken up a guarding position on the edge of the mattress, between her and the door. Between her and their captors. Between her and the world.

And then, after a few minutes, she’d reached back and found his hand. And eventually, by the time morning came, he’d found himself wrapped around her while she slept, amazed at how close two people could be.

“Stay,” she said again. 

Walter was frozen into place. He wanted to stay. And he wanted to run away. But she had his hand, and her eyes were so deep, and she stood and pulled him closer. He couldn’t have said no to any request she made.

“I almost lost you,” he said, haltingly, and without any idea what he was saying until it was coming out of his mouth. “I would rather die than lose you.”

She smiled, and it was like all the lights in the house got brighter. And then she moved closer still, and stood up on her tiptoes, and kissed him. 

Walter’s mind went blank. It was like a cool washcloth on a fevered forehead. He kissed her back.

When his mind started up again, they were just separating, and his hands were on her face, and her hands were in his hair.

“I don’t want to be alone tonight,” she said, and he saw the haunting in her eyes, but he’d forgotten why he wanted to leave.

“You won’t be.”

It was a delicate thing, whatever this was, like spun sugar. She took his hand again, and led him to her bedroom. He’d never seen it before, but it was so her that he could have picked it out of a lineup of bedrooms. It smelled like her perfume and soap, and it was all in warm colors and clean lines with tasteful feminine details. Walter let her lead him, took it all in and didn’t ask any questions and tried not to think too hard. He didn’t want to break the strands of whatever this was.

Paige settled into bed, and the sigh she let out when she did told him she was as tired as he was. He had never done anything like this before. He’d had girlfriends before, but he’d never only shared a bed with them. He’d had lovers, but he’d never stayed the night. Usually, women found him interesting, but not lovable, and he’d never thought about why that might be--or what the opposite might feel like. He only hesitated a little before he crawled into bed beside her. 

She was already mostly asleep, but when he settled in, she scooted closer, and found his hand and drew his arm over her side. Was this what so-called normal people did? Was this what it was always like?

Walter snuggled into her back and held her closer. He hadn’t slept so well in years.


End file.
